401–410 of 531 posts
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It's en_gb and not en_uk (although UK is exceptionally reserved [1], and we recently begun using UK on car nationality identifier stickers). [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_3166-1_alpha-2#Exceptional...
GB is the more neutral term, UK is pushed by the Conservatives and nationalists/royalists
Yes I know.. that's not how the word is meant in this context...
Strong FOMO settling in. Premium transatlantic routes routes like NYC-LHR are super important to the bottom line of the big legacy carriers. If one airline has supersonic and others don’t that could be a huge blow to the others. Of course things didn’t work out that way with Concorde, which was not commercially successful and more of a spectacle than something founded in business fundamentals. But if Boom can make su…
My personal hypothesis is that Asian and cross-Pacific traffic has grown considerably in the decades since Concorde was flying and I look forward to wealthy eastern markets keeping the supersonic market viable. If American and United don't figure it out I could see a gulf country carrier or Singapore Airlines making it work. I haven't looked into profitability yet but a quick look at the list of busiest routes shows…
I don't see it doing so well for the middle eastern markets, ultra long hauls on average spend a lot of time flying over land (minus the Australian flights) - for example, see LAX-DXB whose only water crossing is the arctic ocean, where supersonic might not be allowed for ice preservation purposes https://flightaware.com/live/flight/UAE216/history/20220815/... , DXB-Tokyo which is almost entirely land: https://flightaware.com/live/flight/UAE318/history/20220815/... , or DXB-Cape Town, which again is mostly over land: https://flightaware.com/live/flight/UAE772/history/20220816/...
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> I want to illustrate how we're losing our lead in some critical areas How is single-engine piston aircraft a critical area? edit: I do note that according to 2019 report, North American companies had >60% global marketshare in both turboprops and business jets in terms of units shipped
> How is single-engine piston aircraft a critical area? Where do you think airline pilots come from? New pilots learn to fly in single-engine piston planes. And then again as flight instructors and commercial (non-ATP) pilots while building time to get their ATP rating and move onto the airlines. The continual slow death of GA is only going to worse an increasingly dire pilot shortage.
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Just want to reply to my own post here to add that most people don't realize that the Cirrus SR22 is the world's best selling single engine piston aircraft and has been for the past 20 years. And it's wholly owned by the Chinese government. I'm aware this is a different market, but I want to illustrate how we're losing our lead in some critical areas, while we focus on creating solutions looking for a problem. Incide…
TIL Cirrus was owned by CAIGA - looks like they're also building some light bizjets for Cessna... Neat. Love to watch traffic at KAPA - saw a Walton plane land there the other day an hour or so before Condi was named part owner of the Broncos.
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Not only very expensive, but basically coach class all the way through, even for the rich people.
Rich people value time highly. Coach-class that gets you somewhere quickly can be worth a lot more than first-class that takes twice as long.
How is the fuel efficiency of these? They go faster, but I assume they would also fly higher where the air is thinner. Does it cancel out?
https://www.pprune.org/tech-log/423988-concorde-question.htm...
At the beginning of the take off roll, each engine would be burning around 21 tonnes/hour.
Anyway, back to some figues; at Mach 2, 50,000', the typical fuel burn per engine would be around 5 tonnes/hour, falling to around 4.2 tonnes/hour at 60,000'
Not a lot to go on here. Boom projects first flight in 2026 for the Overture. They seem to be fairly close to first flight with their XB-1, but it has not flown yet. I congratulate them on getting funding, but all the hard parts are ahead. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boom_XB-1
Awkward... The website FAQs still say "XB-1 test flights are planned for early 2022."
Overture is a production model for commercial operations.
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Fuel prices were absolutely an issue for Concorde. BA struggled immensely with the Arab oil embargo and the per-seat cost for the Concorde shot up into the stratosphere and ticket sales collapsed.
The oil embargo hit the entire industry hard, but Concorde continued operation into 2003. Over time as other aircraft became more efficient the efficiency gap grew much larger but it was still profitable up to Air France Flight 4590.
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The internet tells me that there is only one ocean liner left (Queen Mary 2), which travels only between the UK and the US east coast.
She's the only one in service right now, but looks to also currently depart from Australia, the Emirates, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Singapore, and South Africa.
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Agree that this would be important except that there's basically ~no work being done on supersonic trans-Pacific flight. Boom's design doesn't have the range to operate trans-Pacific, and AFAIK there has never been any supersonic passenger aircraft (built or designed) that has had the range to pull it off. I do agree though, LHR-JFK holds very little fascination for me. It's a relatively short flight with a lot of gr…
Yeah. You can/could get JFK (or EWR) to LHR (or LCY) without a red eye. Not sure what routes exist these days though I've taken EWR to LHR in time for a late-ish dinner in the city quite a few times. It's a long day but even in Economy Plus seating, it's not much longer/less comfortable than flying coast to coast.